In recent years; museum professionals; visitors and politicians have directed their interest towards the museum as a new arena for communication and learning. In this article; I explore the museum as an educational site from a multimodal and social semiotic approach. This approach implies a view of communication and learning as a social process of sign-making; where the meaning of a message is realised across several resources or modes of communication. As an example; I study the characteristics and the design of an archaeological exhibition at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm; Sweden. The exhibition is described and explored as a multimodal pedagogical text. In my ’reading’ of the text; I examine how the design encourages a specific reading path and how it creates coherence through ’framing’ and through the use of colour. I examine how meaning is made through objects; text; image and sound.